Thursday, April 12, 2012

Lots to catch up on here! I am working on posts to share pictures from our Spring Break in Hawaii and Easter. But for now I thought I'd relay a Vivian story.

Vivian has been doing REALLY well lately. She has been so sweet and compliant. I've been able to take her to the grocery store with me, and we've even eaten out on a couple of occasions without incident!

Yesterday morning at school, however, Vivian was not cooperative. She melted down on the floor, refused to sit in her seat, balked at working, etc. Her saint-of-an-aide, Mrs. Kemp, called me to see if Vivian had had a seizure or anything during the night because her behavior was so out of whack. I told Mrs. Kemp that we had not seen a seizure but that one was likely imminent (there is usually a correlation with Vivian between agitated, aggressive behavior and seizure activity). After I attempted unsuccessfully to convince Vivian over the phone to be sweet, Mrs. Kemp assured me they could handle the situation and I hung up.

Later in the day I texted Mrs. Kemp to see how Vivian was doing.

She responded, "Absolutely wonderful! Complying with everything. After I got off the phone with you, I had Vivian start taking checkmarks off her schedule. Vivian lost one check for going to the floor and another for not going to clean the tables in the cafeteria. After Vivian realized she had only one left (which she needed in order to be rewarded with typing time on the computer after PE), she said, 'I want all my checkmarks back.' I told her, 'Sorry, Vivi, you lost them.' She made a little whimper sound, but after that she walked nicely to the gym and completed all her tasks, earned typing and continued to work all during 3rd period and didn't want to take a break."

6 comments:

This is such a sweet story! Vivian is so fortunate to have such patient women in her life who are helping her learn through rewards and responsibilities. I found your blog through Kappa Prep a while back and also live in Dallas and this story made me smile today so I had to say hi!

Pictured above, starting in upper left and moving clockwise:

Married for 27 years to Robert, three kids: Will (23), Vivian (20) and Dots (17) ~~~~
Majored in mathematics at SMU, taught elementary school for six years before Will was born, currently tutoring math ~~~~
Things I enjoy: playing duplicate bridge, working NY Times crossword puzzles, reading good books, entertaining, visiting with friends, planning trips, traveling, playing board games, spending time with family, cooking, keeping up with old friends ~~~ happy to correspond with other parents about raising a child with special needs

Note about Pictures

I unintentionally contaminated all of the pictures on my blog when I changed my privacy settings on Flickr. I am working backwards to correct them all, but it is quite a tedious procedure! If you encounter a post with error messages from Flickr where the pictures should be, then I haven't gotten to that post yet. Please let me know and I will update it immediately. Thanks for your patience!